mopete went to the theatre today. he took
a girl, and vasilescu's father's friend saw him—called hello
to him, too—mopete threw a meaningful, if too
obvious glance at the girl beside him, and with a fixed look
walked right by. the play proved to be of great interest.
the girl at mopete's side—she wasn't young nefa—listened
totally absorbed. mopete said to himself—now he'll have turned
round to look at you—and put on an earnest
expression. he pretended to be engrossed by the play. then a
while later, the girl cocked her head and spied
upon mopete, as if with wonderment (how shrewd
these girls are, mopete told himself). like an antenna
in a raised position, mopete strove to hear everything the girl thought
as she sat beside him. vasilescu's father's friend laughed.

Mircea IvÄï¿½nescu (born March 26, 1931) lives in Sibiu in Transylvania, where he worked for many years as an editor of the journal Transilvania. A major Romanian voice, he has not gained significant recognition outside Romania. He published his first book, lines, in 1968 at the age of thirty-seven, continued at a steady pace to produce his plain, lower-case titles—among them, poems (1970), lyrics (1970), further lines (1972), further poems (1973), new lyrics (1982), and poems old, new (1989). In 1983, other poems, other lines, translated into English by Èï¿½tefan Stoenescu, appeared in Romania, and in 1992, would-be poems, forty-five works in fixed-forms and free verse, all of which IvÄï¿½nescu wrote directly in English, was published in Sibiu. IvÄï¿½nescu has been an active translator of English, German, and French literature into Romanian; his translations include books such as Franz Kafka's Journal and Letters to Milena, Henri Perruchot's Life of Gauguin, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, and Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. He has also translated five novels by William Faulkner, including The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom! and The Reivers; both of F. Scott Fitzgerald's canonical works of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night; James Joyce's Ulysses; and a 1986 anthology, Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. In the fall of 1999, he was awarded the prestigious national íMihai Eminescuë Prize for Poetry, and in 2000, he was awarded a special Presidential Prize for his career achievement. Adam J. Sorkin's English translations of his poems have appeared in Xanadu, Square Lake, Drexel Online Journal, Two Rivers Review, Harvard Review, Poetry Daily, Four Corners, Pleiades, Cutthroat, and Cincinnati Review. His collection Lines Poems Poetry is available from the University of Plymouth Press [UK].

Lidia Vianu, a poet, novelist, critic, and translator, is Professor of English at the University of Bucharest, where she is Director of CTITC (Centre for the Translation and Interpretation of the Contemporary Text), which she established. She has been Fulbright lecturer at University of California Berkeley and SUNY Binghamton. Vianu has published literary criticism, including the "Desperado project": The Desperado Age: British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium (Bucharest University Press, 2004); Alan Brownjohn and the Desperado Age (Bucharest University Press, 2003; and British Desperadoes at the Turn of the Millennium (ALL Publishing, Bucharest, 1999); two books of interviews; a novel; three poetry collections; English-learning manuals; edited anthologies; and four translated books.

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Words without Borders opens doors to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the best international literature. Every month we publish select prose and poetry on our site. In addition we develop print anthologies, work with educators to bring literature in translation into classrooms, host events with foreign authors, and maintain an extensive archive of global writing.